She tripped on something.
Chloe looked down to see what had tangled around her foot.
Looked like…scrubs. The pants that a doctor would wear.
He’d ditched his disguise. Blended with everyone else. She looked up again, squinting against the light. Where had he gone?
Her bag was still locked around her body, crosswise. Her fingers fumbled inside it until they found her phone. Good thing Cedric was one of her contacts. She brought the phone to her ear and tried to ignore the rising nausea in her throat.
“Not a good time,” Cedric growled by way of answering. “I’m taking care of King and—”
“North lot,” she told him. At least, she was about sixty percent certain it was the north lot. “Perp…just fled via the old—old chapel exit.”
“What?”
Her left hand touched the back of her head. She felt the warm, wet stickiness of her blood. “And I think I need a d-doctor.”
***
“What?”
Joel turned at the sharp note of alarm in Cedric’s voice. And his first thought was—has there been another attack?
“Hurt? How? Chloe, dammit, talk to me!”
Chloe? Joel’s blood iced even as he lunged for the detective.
“Your words are slurring,” Cedric fired out. Joel could hear the alarm in the detective’s voice. See it on his face. “Are you at the hospital’s old chapel? Is that what you said?”
Joel couldn’t hear her response, but he saw Cedric give a jerky nod. That was good enough for him. Joel immediately ran down the hallway.
“We’ll get security there,” Cedric’s voice followed him. “And I’ll tell my team about the perp being in the north parking lot. Don’t you—”
Joel didn’t hear more. He was too far away. He shoved open the door for the stairway and ran down those stairs. He wasn’t waiting for an elevator. He was getting to Chloe. She was hurt. She’d been attacked—attacked by the same bastard who’d killed Kelly?
Attacked by the same bastard…who tortured me?
He couldn’t let that sonofabitch get Chloe. Couldn’t let him hurt her. He wouldn’t torture her. He wouldn’t take Chloe.
No one could take Chloe.
Joel erupted from the stairwell and ran down the hallway. His shoulder slammed into some guy who stumbled into his path. Joel kept going. His heart was about to burst straight from his chest. Chloe. Chloe. Chloe. Her name was a constant refrain in his mind.
Up ahead, he saw two security guards running down the hallway, coming in his direction. The chapel was about ten feet away, so he knew they were heading there, too. Must have been contacted by Cedric. He didn’t stop when he saw them. Joel barreled right inside that chapel. “Chloe!” Joel roared her name.
He stumbled past some broken boards as his gaze frantically swept the scene for—
“Here.” Her voice was weak. Low. Not like Chloe at all. He saw a shadowy figure slumped against the far wall, not too far from the altar. He rushed toward her even as the guards spilled into the chapel behind him.
As he leapt for her, he saw Chloe start to lift her right hand. She was holding mace.
“Baby?”
Her head tilted. “I see…two of you. Both h-handsome. B-but angry.”
What?
“Make sure I don’t…don’t have a skull fracture, will you?”
What. The. Fucking. Hell?
“Thanks so much,” she told him and her body began to fall.
He caught her before she could slide to the floor. “Chloe.”
Chapter Twelve
“This is completely unnecessary.” Chloe glared from her position in the hospital bed. “A brief exam is certainly fine and understandable given the circumstances, but once we ascertained that there was no skull fracture, I should be free to—”
“You have a concussion, Chloe,” Joel snapped as he crossed his arms and glowered from the foot of the bed. Every muscle in his body had locked down. Adrenaline, fear, and rage beat inside of him, growing into an inferno.
“I’m aware of that.” She kept glaring at the doctor who’d been assigned to her, and she didn’t look at Joel. She hadn’t looked at him, not since she’d woken up.
She’d passed out in his arms. Given that some asshole had slammed a board into the back of her head, she’d been lucky to stay conscious as long as she had.
Lucky.
She’d only had her mace as a weapon. She’d been on her own, hunting a killer.
Not supposed to happen. They were partners. Or they had been, until he’d been a dick and left her. But she hadn’t given up. He knew she’d gone after the guy because of who the SOB was to Joel.
You did it for me, didn’t you?
And she could have died. What the fuck did she think her death would do?
“You’re not immortal,” he informed her. In case she’d missed that important detail about herself.
“Never thought I was.” Her voice wasn’t slurred the way it had been when he found her in the chapel. Her skin also was no longer bleached of color. “But I do think I am capable of recovering from a bump on the head.”
Dr. Theodore Allan peered down at his notes. The light glinted off his glasses. “While there was no fracture or swelling of the brain detected—”
“Which is excellent,” Chloe cut in. “Because I would hate for my brain to swell.”
Joel’s eyes narrowed.
“You do have a concussion as well as some pretty severe bruising on your left shoulder. I recommend that you stay overnight at the hospital,” he looked up with a nod, “so that we can monitor you in order to make sure your condition doesn’t worsen.”
She’d been dressed in a green hospital gown. Her fingers pressed to the front of the gown.
Joel wanted her to look his way. “Worsen,” he repeated. “As in…you have a freaking traumatic brain injury. That concussion will impact how your brain works for a while.” She could have periods of confusion or fogginess—something he was sure Chloe was not used to experiencing. “You’ll possibly have headaches, your alertness level will vary, and you could even pass out again.”
“Your vision has returned to normal.” The doctor moved toward her and waved his light before her eyes. “But Dr. Landry said you reported seeing two of him when he first found you.”
“Joel,” he corrected. “Just…Joel.”
Dr. Allan lowered his light and peered at Chloe. He lifted his right hand. “How many fingers?”
“Are we doing this again?” She sighed. “I grow weary of the finger game.”
“Chloe.” Joel’s voice was curt and held a warning edge. “Just answer him.”
“Three. It was two before. Then five. Then one. I remember all the fingers. Now can I go home?”
The doctor’s lips thinned. “You could have seizures. Dizziness. I want to stress that you need monitoring and staying at this facility is the best course of—”
“No offense,” Chloe said as she shook her head, “but someone was recently murdered in your facility. I don’t think staying here is the safest idea for me. Actually, the facility now has a track record with incidents like this one. I previously worked a case where—”